The Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Volume I Part 14

As for Mary, she regarded the whole Westbrook family as the source of grief and shame to Sh.e.l.ley. Harriet she only knew for a frivolous, heartless, faithless girl, whom she had never had the faintest cause to respect, hardly even to pity. Poor Harriet was indeed deserving of profound commiseration, and no one could have known and felt this more than Mary would have done, in later years. But she heard one side of the case only, and that one the side on which her own strongest feelings were engaged. She was only nineteen, with an exalted ideal of womanly devotion; and at nineteen we may sternly judge what later on we may condemn indeed, but with a depth of pity quite beyond the power of its object to fathom or comprehend.

No comment whatever on the occurrence appears in her journal. She threw herself ardently into Sh.e.l.ley's eagerness to get possession of his elder children; ready, for his sake, to love them as her own.

It could not but occur to her that her own position was altered by this event, and that nothing now stood between her and her legal marriage to Sh.e.l.ley and acknowledgment as his wife. So completely, however, did they regard themselves as united for all time by indissoluble ties that she thought of the change chiefly as it affected other people.

MARY TO Sh.e.l.lEY.

BATH, _17th December 1816_.

MY BELOVED FRIEND--I waited with the greatest anxiety for your letter.

You are well, and that a.s.surance has restored some peace to me.

How very happy shall I be to possess those darling treasures that are yours. I do not exactly understand what Chancery has to do in this, and wait with impatience for to-morrow, when I shall hear whether they are with you; and then what will you do with them? My heart says, bring them instantly here; but I submit to your prudence. You do not mention G.o.dwin. When I receive your letter to-morrow I shall write to Mrs. G.o.dwin. I hope, yet I fear, that he will show on this occasion some disinterestedness. Poor, dear f.a.n.n.y, if she had lived until this moment she would have been saved, for my house would then have been a proper asylum for her. Ah! my best love, to you do I owe every joy, every perfection that I may enjoy or boast of. Love me, sweet, for ever. I hardly know what I mean, I am so much agitated. Clare has a very bad cough, but I think she is better to-day. Mr. Carn talks of bleeding if she does not recover quickly, but she is positively resolved not to submit to that. She sends her love. My sweet love, deliver some message from me to your kind friends at Hampstead; tell Mrs. Hunt that I am extremely obliged to her for the little profile she was so kind as to send me, and thank Mr. Hunt for his friendly message which I did not hear.

These Westbrooks! But they have nothing to do with your sweet babes; they are yours, and I do not see the pretence for a suit; but to-morrow I shall know all.

Your box arrived to-day. I shall send soon to the upholsterer, for now I long more than ever that our house should be quickly ready for the reception of those dear children whom I love so tenderly. Then there will be a sweet brother and sister for my William, who will lose his pre-eminence as eldest, and be helped third at table, as Clare is continually reminding him.

Come down to me, sweetest, as soon as you can, for I long to see you and embrace.

As to the event you allude to, be governed by your friends and prudence as to when it ought to take place, but it must be in London.

Clare has just looked in; she begs you not to stay away long, to be more explicit in your letters, and sends her love.

You tell me to write a long letter, and I would, but that my ideas wander and my hand trembles. Come back to rea.s.sure me, my Sh.e.l.ley, and bring with you your darling Ianthe and Charles. Thank your kind friends. I long to hear about G.o.dwin.--Your affectionate

MARY.

Have you called on Hogg? I would hardly advise you. Remember me, sweet, in your sorrows as well as your pleasures; they will, I trust, soften the one and heighten the other feeling. Adieu.

To Percy Bysshe Sh.e.l.ley, 5 Gray's Inn Square, London.

No time was lost in putting things on their legal footing. Sh.e.l.ley took Mary up to town, where the marriage ceremony took place at St. Mildred's Church, Broad Street, in presence of G.o.dwin and Mrs. G.o.dwin. On the previous day he had seen his daughter for the first time since her flight from his house two and a half years before.

Both must have felt a strange emotion which, probably, neither of them allowed to appear.

Mary for a fortnight left a blank in her journal. On her return to Clifton she thus shortly chronicled her days--

I have omitted writing my journal for some time. Sh.e.l.ley goes to London and returns; I go with him; spend the time between Leigh Hunt's and G.o.dwin's. A marriage takes place on the 29th of December 1816.

Draw; read Lord Chesterfield and Locke.

G.o.dwin's relief and satisfaction were great indeed. His letter to his brother in the country, announcing his daughter's recent marriage with a baronet's eldest son, can only be compared for adroit manipulation of facts with a later letter to Mr. Baxter of Dundee, in which he tells of poor f.a.n.n.y's having been attacked in Wales by an inflammatory fever "which carried her off."

He now surpa.s.sed himself "in polished and cautious attentions" both to Sh.e.l.ley and Mary, and appeared to wish to compensate in every way for the red-hot, righteous indignation which, owing to wounded pride rather than to offended moral sense, he had thought it his duty to exhibit in the past.

Sh.e.l.ley's heart yearned towards his two poor little children by Harriet, and to get possession of them was now his feverish anxiety. On this business he was obliged, within a week of his return to Bath, to go up again to London. During his absence, on the 13th of January, Clare's little girl, Byron's daughter, was born. "Four days of idleness," are Mary's only allusion to this event. It was communicated to the absent father by Sh.e.l.ley, in a long letter from London. He quite simply a.s.sumes the event to be an occasion of great rejoicing to all concerned, and expects Byron to feel the same. The infant, who afterwards developed into a singularly fascinating and lovely child, was described in enthusiastic terms by Mary as unusually beautiful and intelligent, even at this early stage. Their first name for her was Alba, or "the Dawn"; a reminiscence of Byron's nickname, "Albe."

Most of this month of January, while Mary had Clare and the infant to look after, was of necessity spent by Sh.e.l.ley in London. Harriet's father, Mr.

Westbrook, and his daughter Eliza had filed an appeal to the Court of Chancery, praying that her children might be placed in the custody of guardians to be appointed by the Court, and not in that of their father.

On 24th January, poor little William's first birthday, the case was heard before Lord Chancellor Eldon. Mary, expecting that the decision would be known at once, waited in painful suspense to hear the result.

_Journal, Friday, January 24._--My little William's birthday. How many changes have occurred during this little year; may the ensuing one be more peaceful, and my William's star be a fortunate one to rule the decision of this day. Alas! I fear it will be put off, and the influence of the star pa.s.s away. Read the _Arcadia_ and _Amadis_; walk with my sweet babe.

Her fears were realised, for two months were to elapse ere judgment was p.r.o.nounced.

_Sat.u.r.day, January 25._--An unhappy day. I receive bad news and determine to go up to London. Read the _Arcadia_ and _Amadis_. Letter from Mrs. G.o.dwin and William.

Accordingly, next day, Mary went up to join her husband in town, and notes in her diary that she was met at the inn by Mrs. G.o.dwin and William. Well might Sh.e.l.ley say of the ceremony that it was "magical in its effects."

As it turned out, this was her final departure from Bath: she never returned there. On her arrival in London she was warmly welcomed by Sh.e.l.ley's new friends, the Leigh Hunts, at whose house most of her time was spent, and whose genial, social circle was most refres.h.i.+ng to her. The house at Marlow had been taken, and was now being prepared for her reception. Little William and his nurse, escorted by Clare, joined her at the Hunts on the 18th of February, but Clare herself stayed elsewhere. At the end of the month they all departed for their new home, and were established there early in March.

CHAPTER X

MARCH 1817-MARCH 1818

The Sh.e.l.leys' new abode, although situated in a lovely part of the country, was cold and cheerless, and, at that bleak time of year, must have appeared at its worst. Albion House stood (and, though subdivided and much altered in appearance, still stands) in what is now the main street of Great Marlow, and at a considerable distance from the river. At the back the garden-plot rises gradually from the level of the house, terminating in a kind of artificial mound, overshadowed by a spreading cedar; a delightfully shady lounge in summer, but shutting off sky and suns.h.i.+ne from the house. There are two large, low, old-fas.h.i.+oned rooms; one on the ground floor, somewhat like a farmhouse kitchen; the other above it; both facing towards the garden. In one of these Sh.e.l.ley fitted up a library, little thinking that the dwelling, which he had rashly taken on a more than twenty years' lease, would be his home for only a year. The rest of the house accommodated Mary, Clare, the children and servants, and left plenty of room for visitors. Sh.e.l.ley was hospitality itself, and though he never was in greater trouble for money than during this year, he entertained a constant succession of guests. First among these was G.o.dwin; next, and most frequent, the genial but needy Leigh Hunt, with all his family. With Mary, as with Sh.e.l.ley, he had quickly established himself on a footing of easy, affectionate friendliness, as may be inferred from Mary's letter, written to him during her first days at Marlow.

MARLOW, _1 o'clock, 5th March 1817_.

MY DEAR HUNT--Although you mistook me in thinking I wished you to write about politics in your letters to me--as such a thought was very far from me,--yet I cannot help mentioning your last week's _Examiner_, as its boldness gave me extreme pleasure. I am very glad to find that you wrote the leading article, which I had doubted, as there was no significant hand. But though I speak of this, do not fear that you will be teased by _me_ on these subjects when we enjoy your company at Marlow. When there, you shall never be serious when you wish to be merry, and have as many nuts to crack as there are words in the Pet.i.tions to Parliament for Reform--a tremendous promise.

Have you never felt in your succession of nervous feelings one single disagreeable truism gain a painful possession of your mind and keep it for some months? A year ago, I remember, my private hours were all made bitter by reflections on the certainty of death, and now the flight of time has the same power over me. Everything pa.s.ses, and one is hardly conscious of enjoying the present until it becomes the past.

I was reading the other day the letters of Gibbon. He entreats Lord Sheffield to come with all his family to visit him at Lausanne, and dwells on the pleasure such a visit will occasion. There is a little gap in the date of his letters, and then he complains that this solitude is made more irksome by their having been there and departed.

So will it be with us in a few months when you will all have left Marlow. But I will not indulge this gloomy feeling. The sun s.h.i.+nes brightly, and we shall be very happy in our garden this summer.--Affectionately yours,

MARINA.

Not only did Sh.e.l.ley keep open house for his friends; his kindliness and benevolence to the distressed poor in Marlow and the surrounding country was unbounded. Nor was he content to give money relief; he visited the cottagers; and made himself personally acquainted with them, their needs, and their sufferings.

In all these labours of love and charity he was heartily and constantly seconded by Mary.

No more alone through the world's wilderness, Although (he) trod the paths of high intent, (He) journeyed now.[23]

From the time of her union with him Mary had been his consoler, his cherished love, all the dearer to him for the thought that she was dependent on him and only on him for comfort and support, and enlightenment of mind; but yet she was a child,--a clever child,--sedate and thoughtful beyond her years, and full of true womanly devotion,--but still one whose first and only acquaintance with the world had been made by coming violently into collision with it, a dangerous experience, and hardening, especially if prolonged. From the time of her marriage a maturer, mellower tone is perceptible throughout her letters and writings, as though, the unnatural strain removed, and, above all, intercourse with her father restored, she glided naturally and imperceptibly into the place Nature intended her to fill, as responsible woman and wife, with social as well as domestic duties to fulfil.

The suffering of the past two or three years had left her wiser if also sadder than before; already she was beginning to look on life with a calm liberal judgment of one who knew both sides of many questions, yet still her mind retained the simplicity and her spirit much of the buoyancy of youth. The unquenchable spring of love and enthusiasm in Sh.e.l.ley's breast, though it led him into errors and brought him grief and disillusionment, was a talisman that saved him from Byronic sarcasm, from the bitterness of recoil and the death of stagnation. He suffered from reaction, as all such natures must suffer, but Mary was by his side to steady and balance and support him, and to bring to him for his consolation the balm she had herself received from him. Well might he write--

Now has descended a serener hour, And, with inconstant fortune, friends return; Though suffering leaves the knowledge and the power Which says: Let scorn be not repaid with scorn.[24]

And consolation and support were sorely needed. In March Lord Chancellor Eldon p.r.o.nounced the judgment by which he was deprived, on moral and religious grounds, of the custody of his two elder children. How bitterly he felt, how keenly he resented, this decree all the world knows. The paper which he drew up during this celebrated case, in which he declared, as far as he chose to declare them, his sentiments with regard to his separation from Harriet and his union with Mary, is the nearest approach to self-vindication Sh.e.l.ley ever made. But the decision of the Court cast a slur on his name, and on that of his second wife. The final arrangements about the children dragged on for many months. They were eventually given over to the guardians.h.i.+p of a clergyman, a stranger to their father, who had to set aside 200 a year of his income for their maintenance in exile.

Meanwhile G.o.dwin's exactions were incessant, and his demands, sometimes impossible to grant, were harder than ever to deal with now that they were couched in terms of friends.h.i.+p, almost of affection. On 9th March we find Sh.e.l.ley writing to him--

It gives me pain that I cannot send you the whole of what you want. I enclose a cheque to within a few pounds of my possessions.